CONCERT REVIEW

Dee Dee Bridgewater, left, and Christian McBride perform Saturday as part of the Monterey Jazz Festival tour at the Carolina Theatre in Durham.

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By Keren Rivas / Special to the Times-News

Published: Monday, January 28, 2013 at 04:25 PM.

DURHAM — There’s nothing like a jazz jam session to warm up on a cold, winter night, and no one better than the Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour band to create a cozy atmosphere and fire up an audience. “It’s cold outside and it’s cold inside,” singer Dee Dee Bridgewater playfully told the crowd that filled the Carolina Theatre last Friday night. But, she added, “the music is keeping us warm.” The six world-renowned jazz musicians who make up the band certainly electrified the audience with a masterful performance that lasted more than two hours. The show was one of 45 stops the band is making in North America in celebration of the festival’s 55th anniversary. Bridgewater and bassist and bandleader Christian McBride opened the show with a sensuous rendition of the Billie Holiday song “My Mother’s Son-in-Law,” which the duo recorded as part of the Grammy-award winning 2010 album “Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie with Love from Dee Dee Bridgewater.” The rest of the band — pianist Benny Green, drummer Lewis Nash, saxophonist Chris Potter and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire — joined them after the duet and set the tone for the rest of the night with jazz standards such as “All of Me” and “East of the Sun (West of the Moon).” Throughout the night, the musicians burst into solo improvisations amidst cheers and claps from the audience, who reveled in such spontaneous displays. They also performed some original pieces composed by members of the band, including Potter’s “Salome’s Dance” and Green’s “Certainly,” which allowed them to once again showcase their musical dexterity. No doubt one of the most charismatic and brightest stars of the show, Bridgewater shone with dramatic and scat performances in the Thad Jones composition “A Child Is Born,” the soulful “God Bless the Child” and Horace Silver’s funky tune “Filthy McNasty,” with which the band closed the show. After much clapping and cheering, the audience got its wish as the band returned to the stage for one final number, fittingly a composition by Dave Brubeck (“Theme from ‘Mr. Broadway’ ”), who was instrumental in getting the city’s approval for the first Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958. If the goal of the band was to celebrate 55 years of jazz, it was clear by the end of the night that they succeeded.

Keren Rivas is a former Times-News reporter who now works at Elon University.

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DURHAM — There’s nothing like a jazz jam session to warm up on a cold, winter night, and no one better than the Monterey Jazz Festival On Tour band to create a cozy atmosphere and fire up an audience.
“It’s cold outside and it’s cold inside,” singer Dee Dee Bridgewater playfully told the crowd that filled the Carolina Theatre last Friday night. But, she added, “the music is keeping us warm.”
The six world-renowned jazz musicians who make up the band certainly electrified the audience with a masterful performance that lasted more than two hours. The show was one of 45 stops the band is making in North America in celebration of the festival’s 55th anniversary.
Bridgewater and bassist and bandleader Christian McBride opened the show with a sensuous rendition of the Billie Holiday song “My Mother’s Son-in-Law,” which the duo recorded as part of the Grammy-award winning 2010 album “Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie with Love from Dee Dee Bridgewater.”
The rest of the band — pianist Benny Green, drummer Lewis Nash, saxophonist Chris Potter and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire — joined them after the duet and set the tone for the rest of the night with jazz standards such as “All of Me” and “East of the Sun (West of the Moon).”
Throughout the night, the musicians burst into solo improvisations amidst cheers and claps from the audience, who reveled in such spontaneous displays.
They also performed some original pieces composed by members of the band, including Potter’s “Salome’s Dance” and Green’s “Certainly,” which allowed them to once again showcase their musical dexterity.
No doubt one of the most charismatic and brightest stars of the show, Bridgewater shone with dramatic and scat performances in the Thad Jones composition “A Child Is Born,” the soulful “God Bless the Child” and Horace Silver’s funky tune “Filthy McNasty,” with which the band closed the show.
After much clapping and cheering, the audience got its wish as the band returned to the stage for one final number, fittingly a composition by Dave Brubeck (“Theme from ‘Mr. Broadway’ ”), who was instrumental in getting the city’s approval for the first Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958.
If the goal of the band was to celebrate 55 years of jazz, it was clear by the end of the night that they succeeded.

Keren Rivas is a former Times-News reporter who now works at Elon University.